Potions of Resistance - bad for the game?

[CapnZapp]

This has been touched upon earlier, but I can't remember a dedicated thread for its discussion.

Like the topic says. Potions of Resistance (& Gravespawn Potions etc) are essentially free except for the lowest levels.

And they put a serious dent in the monster damage output except for untyped damage. (They can completely shut down typed ongoing damage!) The game already is accused of low monster damage output - does it need essentially free access to this way of reducing it further?

(Note I am assuming powers that grant resistance are fine for the purposes of this thread. At least these aren't free like potions are)

Solutions? I'm going to start up a parallel house-rule thread for those. Here we discuss whether potions of resistance poses a problem at all.

 

[Jhaelen]

Potions of Resistance - bad for the game?

Nope.

Actually, powers granting resistances are free while potions are not (yeah, I understood your argumentation, I just don't agree it's a problem).

 

[Ryujin]

I don't think that they're all that much of an issue. They don't stack with other resistances. They generally function against a single specific damage type (rarely two), so you would need a medicine cabinet full of them to deal with whatever comes your way, unless in a 'themed' adventure that relied heavily on one damage type. Using them in every encounter quickly becomes prohibitively expensive.

 

[Eric Finley]

I concur that it is a potential problem. I haven't seen it in play yet, but that's largely because I keep having to kick our alchemist and potion brewer in the NADs to remind him to plan ahead. They're currently in the middle of an encounter which would be going far better for them if they had a little bit of fire and cold resist, but which may as it is result in a near-TPK.

I'll comment on house rule solutions in the other thread.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Can you explain more why you think the potions are free or "essentially free?"

 

[keterys]

50g is essentially free at higher levels. A surge is sometimes essentially free, depending on the character and game.

For example, I have a character with 13 surges who never sees more than 4 encounters per day and has never been below... I want to say 8 surges spent.

My problem with resistance potions and powers are more that they're too effective at neutering certain monsters and otherwise making encounters actively more boring. Drinking resistance potions before fighting a dragon, casting mass resistance in an encounter with zone effects, ongoing damage, minions, etc.

 

[renau1g]

I know my level 1 deva avenger had no issue against a bunch of minions recently (Wisp Wraiths and some other undead) that did 4 necrotic damage on a hit. He laughed at them and charged right through them to get to their necromancer leader.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's an issue all right. The simple example is a bunch of epic level characters. They can basically have infinity heroic tier resistance potions. Even counting the cost of the Bag of Holding for every character so they can lug them around there's NO reason why they wouldn't simply have 10 of every sort of heroic tier potion and probably 10 of every paragon tier one to boot. Even at epic resist 5 is nothing to sneeze at and its virtually assured you're going to save more HP that way than your surge value in any kind of reasonably threatening encounter involving typed damage.

The action cost is a bit of a different matter, but still pretty low. Between that and the surge the PCs probably won't guzzle one every single encounter, and maybe not even in cases where it might be marginally useful, but they sure will do it pretty often. Once they swill that thing down its going to make a major difference in the damage they take too.

Overall it may not be quite as dire an issue as it is sometimes made out to be, but it is potentially significant and can force the DM to constrain his encounter design options in a group that works it to the hilt.

I'm not so sure about potions relative to powers. Resistance granting powers are IIRC pretty much all dailies. When they hit the table they'll make a big difference in all likelyhood, but at least they aren't available potentially in every encounter.

 

[Ryujin]

Two words: multiple keywords.

 

[Flipguarder]

If your party gains knowledge of the type of enemy they will be fighting soon, while having access to a town in which they can buy resist potions, and they spend the money to do so, sure why the hell not shouldn't they get a huge bonus in those battles? That's a lot of stuff that has to happen in their favor.